12 Jul Reach Kidney Care Partners with University of New Mexico’s Kidney Paired Donation Program

Last August, UAB Hospital completed the 51st kidney transplant in the longest living-donor kidney transplant chain. This chain included nine altruistic living donors and involved people from 11 states. The youngest person transplanted was just 15 years old.

Through Kidney Paired Donation Programs like this, the chances of someone in need receiving a kidney transplant significantly increase. Now, our Reach Kidney Care of New Mexico team has the opportunity to participate in a similar program in its own backyard. This July, Reach Kidney Care of New Mexico will officially become a partner with the University of New Mexico (UNM) Hospitals’ Kidney Paired Donation Program.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) defines a kidney paired donation (KPD) as a transplant option for candidates who have a living donor who is medically able, but cannot donate a kidney to their intended candidate because of an incompatibility. If both the donor and recipient are willing, UNOS will work with transplant centers to search for cases where the donor in each pair is compatible with the recipient in another pair (or multiple pairs). By exchanging donors, a compatible match for both recipients can be found, and eventually a chain can begin.

“Having this partnership with UNM is huge because now I can explain to patients that their chances of receiving a kidney transplant are actually higher if they choose to enroll in this program,” said Charlie Campbell, Reach Kidney Care of New Mexico care coordinator.

Reach Kidney Care will act as a referrer to the program, ensuring each patient fully knows his or her transplant options. Reach Kidney Care of New Mexico’s goal of this partnership is to reduce the number of patients on dialysis and increase the number of transplanted patients.

“The biggest benefit of partnering in a Kidney Paired Donation Program is increased access to pre-emptive transplants,” Campbell said. “The more patients who receive transplants, the less who have to undergo dialysis treatment, and that’s our goal.”

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Founded in 1971, Dialysis Clinic, Inc. (DCI) is the nation’s largest non-profit dialysis provider with over 230 outpatient dialysis clinics in 28 states. Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, DCI employs over 5,000 people serving approximately 15,000 dialysis patients. DCI’s services include in-center hemodialysis, in-center self-care hemodialysis, home hemodialysis, Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (CAPD), and Continuous Cycling Peritoneal Dialysis (CCPD). Acute dialysis facilities are located within hospitals around the US. The United States Renal Data System has found DCI to have the lowest patient mortality and hospitalization rates among the national dialysis providers for the last 13 years. DCI operates under the mission “We are a non-profit service organization. The care of the patient is our reason for existence.” For more information on the USRDS information, visit www.usrds.org.